On Aug. 15, 2005, Denver police officer Chris Cameron used sick time to take a day off from his scheduled patrol shift.
Then he put in nine hours of overtime, getting paid time and a half.
It’s not the only time Cameron has earned overtime after taking a sick or vacation day, city payroll and police administrative records show. He did it 33 other times in the two years ending last November, the most recent period for which records were available.
And he is far from alone. Police policy allows officers to bank some of their sick time, then use it like vacation when earning overtime for special police details or working second jobs.
Fire and sheriff’s officials have similar sick-time benefits, but most city workers cannot bank their sick leave, then tap into it like vacation.
Denver’s police policy also gives officers much more latitude in working second jobs than do some other large and medium-size cities.
Officials from the mayor’s office had not heard of the policy until contacted by The Denver Post but said the police chief should review the practice.
Over two years, Denver police officers made at least $16.9 million for off-duty work. Some put in the equivalent of 30 extra weeks a year, raising concerns about fatigue and its impact on the officers’ ability to protect themselves and the public.
Cameron did not return repeated phone calls, but in an e-mail asserted that all his absences were within department policy.
But Police Chief Gerry Whitman, who frequently worked security for bars and restaurants as he made his way through the ranks, said his officers and their supervisors can be counted on to appropriately manage their overtime.
“If they take a day, they can do whatever they want,” Whitman said. “We have restrictions in place and make sure they don’t leave early and come in late to do off-duty work. They have to manage their workload and we have minimum staff requirements.”
In the past two years, Denver officers have worked nearly 50,000 shifts of what is called “off-duty department administered overtime,” which pays time and a half. The length of shifts vary but usually start at four hours.
Unlike regular overtime that is an extension of an officer’s duty that day, off-duty administered overtime is anything from directing traffic at a Broncos game to filling in for another officer.
In some instances, the Broncos, Rockies or Denver International Airport reimburse the city for the shift. Other assignments come out of the police budget.
Including department administered overtime work, Denver officers have put in a total of 677,081 hours working off-duty jobs in the past two years, frequently in bars and nightclubs where police officers would not be allowed to work in some other cities. The rates for off-duty work generally run from $25 to $50 an hour. At $25 an hour, the officers would have made $16.9 million.
Eighty-five percent of the city’s more than 1,405 officers worked some type of off-duty job last year, up from 50 percent in 1995.
Sgt. Mike Mosco, president of Denver’s Police Protective Association, said that supervisors are keeping track of hours and that off-duty police officers save the city money.
“The city doesn’t have to hire officers to staff every need that they have, like Cinco de Mayo and traffic at DIA,” he said. “And what’s too many hours? Other people work second jobs. The department sanctions it and there are rules about the number of extra hours we can work.”
Although City Council members and others have in the past raised safety concerns about the number of off-duty hours worked by Denver police, the city has never before done a comprehensive accounting of the off-duty practice. Statistics for this story were compiled by The Post from a combination of police records and payroll records.
Earning overtime on sick and vacation days is just one of several off-duty assignments that would be considered unusual or even illegal in other cities. Among them:
Denver police officers put in at least 13,813 shifts at off-duty jobs in bars, clubs and restaurants in the past two years – work that is banned in cities such as Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Portland, Ore., and Aurora. However, Atlanta and Boston do allow the practice.
All but two of 22 officers identified by The Post as working a high number of off-duty hours worked another job or a police overtime job at least once on the same day they used sick leave.
Although city rules require authorization by the chief for much of the off-duty work, in reality it’s managed by ranking officers who sometimes form crews and act as brokers to get and schedule off-duty jobs. Brokers can’t take a cut of the officers’ pay.
Some officers regularly work the equivalent of second jobs through off-duty assignments and overtime. A handful of officers worked the equivalent of 29 to 30 extra weeks, raising concerns about exhaustion and judgment.
If an off-duty officer is injured – or injures someone else – while using police authority, the city taxpayers are on the hook for workers’ compensation and liability claims. Last year’s shooting death of Detective Donald Young, for instance, is projected to cost the city more than $1.4 million over the next 40 years.
Some of the police practices came as a surprise to Public Safety Manager Al LaCabe, who oversees the police, sheriff’s and fire departments. LaCabe said he was unable to comment because he would “be answering in a vacuum.”
Off-duty work at the Denver Police Department falls into two categories: department administered overtime and jobs at private businesses.
Department administered overtime is paid to officers who work special details such as conducting traffic at sporting events or filling in understaffed shifts. The department organizes that off-duty work and, in the case of a game, is reimbursed by the organization that needed the officers. In other instances, such as extra shifts, the money comes from the police budget.
The other type of off-duty job is at private businesses. Although the department doesn’t officially arrange this work, it is often parceled out by ranking officers who act as brokers. The business can pay officers in cash.
Officers are limited to working a total of 64 hours a week, on and off duty, and can work up to 16 hours a day, according to the police manual. Those who work at the airport can work 72 hours, and Whitman makes exceptions for officers to work longer weeks.
Police officers must work 160 hours every 28 days, but are not required to put in a 40-hour week. That, combined with an outdated, decentralized records system, makes gauging whether officers are exceeding the weekly limits nearly impossible.
Officers are barred from working in strip clubs and stores that sell pornography. Beyond that, there are few rules governing their outside work, though officers are required to file departmental paperwork. Each officer’s supervisor is responsible for keeping track of his or her time and fatigue levels, Whitman said.
But police officials should have more oversight, including having the off-duty program administered by the department, said professor Michael Scott, a former Lauderhill, Fla., police chief now at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “Having supervisors responsible for keeping up with off-duty work is just not realistic,” Scott said.
Another issue created by off-duty work is employment in bars and nightclubs. In Aurora, officials don’t like the perception created when the public sees an officer in uniform working in a bar. In other cities, it is seen as a potential conflict of interest because officers may be asked to choose between enforcing the law and looking the other way for their private employer.
In Denver, officers worked nearly 14,000 shifts in bars, clubs and other places that serve liquor over the past two years, second only to the number of shifts they put in for department-administered overtime. Banks and sporting events also were in the top four. Whitman refused to release the specific businesses where officers reported they had worked.
Regardless of where they’re working, a number of officers are putting in more than 900 off-duty hours a year.
Capt. Michael Calo, a 20-year veteran of the department, is one of them. In the past two years, Calo has logged 2,433 off-duty hours, according to police records. That translates into 61 extra workweeks.
His job descriptions run the gamut: rodeo, bars, guard, utility, nonprofit and department administered overtime.
The day last year that Detective Young was murdered while working off-duty at the Salon Ocampo banquet hall, Calo was working off-duty across the street and was one of the first officers to respond to the scene.
Calo referred questions to the department and the police union.
Continually working long off-duty hours concerns police expert Joseph Brann.
“There is a safety issue, for both officers and the public. And there is the question of whether officers working a lot of hours are productive either off or on duty,” said Brann, a former police chief and the first director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services at the U.S. Department of Justice. “Studies have been done that show the effects of overtime and job stress on performance.”
A 2000 report compiled for the Justice Department titled “Evaluating the Effects of Fatigue on Police Patrol Officers” found that fatigue among police officers from overtime, moonlighting and other factors increased the likelihood officers will be involved in official misconduct and accidents “that put themselves and the communities at risk due to decreased alertness and impaired performance.”
Some officers in Denver don’t work a lot of hours in a day but instead take off a day from work and do other jobs. Denver officers get 18 sick days a year. After they accumulate 90 days of sick time, the excess – referred to as “accumulated sick leave” – can be used as vacation time or be cashed out yearly.
Some officers tap into “accumulated sick leave” and then go to work at other jobs. That practice is barred in cities such as Portland, Seattle and Aurora.
But the ability to use that sick time as vacation permits Denver officers to get around the police manual restriction that an officer off duty “due to illness” cannot work second jobs.
Sgt. Walter Greene, who worked 2,483 hours off duty in the past two years, used accumulated sick leave and did an overtime assignment or another off-duty job 32 times. On June 7, 2004, Greene missed work but put in time at three other jobs: six hours of assignment overtime, two hours at a food place and four hours for a utility firm.
Greene declined comment, referring questions to Whitman.
At other times, officers use regular sick time, in violation of department policy. One officer working at DIA last year called in sick twice but still collected 14.5 hours in department administered overtime on those days. Three other officers of the 22 examined by The Post called in sick up to seven times and did other jobs on those days.
Off-duty work has raised eyebrows before. Three years ago, a six-month investigation by a special prosecutor into alleged violations by 12 Denver officers found no crimes were committed but that there was a lack of institutional controls stemming from poor record-keeping and no supervision.
Whitman made some changes, but tracking problems still exist. The department does not have a method that breaks down administered overtime in order to know how many hours officers are working in each category.
Staff writer Karen Crummy can be reached at 303-820-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com.
